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Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.

BREAKING WALLS Louise believes in the dynamism of interactivity

For Louise, a site-specific theatre practitioner who has been working on a soon-to-be staged production in Bangalore by Little Jasmine Theatre, every space has its own story to be told. “It’s about scratching beneath the surface to find the hidden depths of a space. When you dig deep enough, you find a rich, full essence. Each place has its own language, its own voice, and it becomes another character, a collaborator in the piece,” says the designer who co-founded Wilson+Wilson in 1997.

Of course, the definition of site varies and Wilson+Wilson’s projects have ranged from an exploration of two 19th century terraced houses in Huddersfield to a four-mile journey through the Mulgrave Woods on the Yorkshire coastline, to a bus-tram-and-foot journey through the city of Sheffield. “‘Mapping The Edge’ encompassed the city of Sheffield and the audience was often unsure of what was real and what was part of the piece,” says Louise, explaining that some of the best moments of the play occurred when the city’s inhabitants interacted with the piece in unintended ways, such as when two punks happened to cross paths with two actors dressed as World War II soldiers, creating a montage for the audience.

Whatever the dimensions of the site, the focus of site-specific theatre always stays on the contiguous relationship between actors, audience and the space. “If you have a seated audience, they can easily switch off. There is a particular relationship barrier between actors and audience in any kind of stage and auditorium setup. But here, the audience occupy the same space, they can touch the actors, hear them breathe.”

Moreover, site-specific theatre also attracts audiences not normally drawn to the theatre. They come because of the uniquely local nature of each production; because the long process of creating a project with sustained interactions with the local community often give them a sense of ownership over the production. “In a sense, the piece isn’t our piece anymore, it’s theirs.”

Louise’s Bangalore connection happened some months ago when she attended a workshop conducted at Trestle Theatre, Plymouth, by Kirtana Kumar of Little Jasmine Theatre. “I had just begun working with clay then, and I wrote to Kirtana explaining that I was planning to come down to India to work with potters here. She offered to put me in touch with people here. At some point, she happened to mention that she was working on a site-specific project called ‘The Wedding Party’ (to be staged at the end of January) and the timing worked out brilliantly.” And so, Louise was in the city through October, giving ideas and perspectives on how to engage with the space, the script and the company.

“I’ve been looking at how the space can be used, how audiences can be moved, how actors work with the space and how the production can harness the architecture (a paper factory), which has everything from alleyways to partial walls to rooms within rooms.” To get the actors to look at the space in the same way, Louise has had the cast and crew of the play do such things as play hide and seek within the factory, create installations in spaces they are particularly drawn to and in spaces that they do not like and so on. After all, says Louise, in order for a site-specific performance to work, the project has to be visualised in multiple dimensions.

“Nothing is accidental. The key is to harness what the space has to offer, then pull out the hidden layers of the piece and the space, and therefore create an extra layer of visual language.”

For details on Louise’s past projects, log onto www.wilsonandwilson.org.uk.

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